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Thursday, May 27, 2010

Hands down the very best free fun activity you can enjoy with your family is a quick trip to Hollywood Beach. My family and friends have been going for years and it only gets better with time. The kids can never get bored of digging in the sand, making sand castles, body surfing, skim boarding, boogie boarding, snorkeling, shell collecting. We all love to play football, paddleball and catch on the sand. There is nothing quite like it. The North Beach section of Hollywood Beach is our favorite. Generally less crowded, arrive early and you can easily find a one dollar per hour meter on one of the many side streets leading down to the beach and enjoy the room to spread out, picnic and play games. If you do not have luck with the meter, there is a very large beach parking lot at Sheridan and A1A which at press time is $7 for all day parking $5 after 3pm til dusk. At the south end of that lot, by the observation tower, there is a little restaurant called the Turtle Cafe and decently clean public bathrooms.

We live in a place where accessing a resort quality beach is easy year round. Hollywood beach has won the prestigious Blue Wave award by the non-profit Clean Beaches Council.
According to the Clean Beaches website:

"Hollywood Beach is rated as the Best Boardwalk Beach, Hollywood Beach is home to a 27-foot wide "Broadwalk" thatextends for two and a half miles and is populated with multitudes of walkers, joggers, roller bladders, bicyclists, unicyclists, jugglers, and skateboarders. Hollywood Beach, which has been a very popular spot for beachlovers for yea

rs, is also one of Greater Fort Lauderdale's five "Blue Wave Beaches," as certified by the Clean Beaches Council, designating it as one of the cleanest, safest and environmentally friendly beaches in the country. The long stretch of wide sandy beach includes the quieter North Beach, the bustling Central Beach and the residential South Beach."

People spend thousands of dollars to come enjoy for a week what we have year round. For the price of a gallon of gas and a few dollars to park at a meter (less than $10) you can have a memorable mini-vacation! Splurge and enjoy an ice cream or a pizza on beautifully bricked Hollywood Beach Broadwalk (that's right broad-walk not board walk..no wood here--bricks!) Bring your rollerblades or bicycle and get a nice long workout. The Hollywood Beach Broadwalk has been named one of America's top ten nostalgic promenades by USA Today. The Hollywood Beach Broadwalk is more than 2 miles long, featuring a pavered car-free pedestrian promenade that combines breath-taking coastal views of award-winning Blue Wave beaches with the nostalgic feel of a cafe lined small town thoroughfare.